Gas−Liquid Mass-Transfer Coefficients in Steel Converters

Abstract

The steel converter, a gas/steel/slag process operating at high temperature, is one of the largest three-phase reactors. Mass transfer between the different phases has a major influence on the elimination of impurities from the hot metal. The aim of the present study was to determine and obtain useful estimations of the gas−liquid transport coefficients for this important system. Because of the difficulty of obtaining experimental data from an actual converter, a detailed analysis was carried out in an analogous cold model, although some comparative values were also obtained in a real converter. Lance blowing, alone or in combination with bottom blowing, is not extensively treated in the literature. Mass-transfer coefficients were obtained by physical methods in a cold model, as well as from hot steelmaking industrial results using kinetic models. In addition, the effects of the blowing flow rates were studied, including an analysis of their influence on these mass-transfer coefficients.